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Thanks Ken

Generally, it would be whatever information your guest may need to know - how to operate the thermostat, where to put the trash, etc.

Hi my name is mike . I live in Michigan and I am remotely managing my condo in Fort Morgan Alabama. well, starting on January 1st i will be managing it. I am filling out a house manual and i am not sure what really goes in it. Can you help?

Thanks 

Figured it out....

Help! I was notified by two prospective guests this morning that the quote email that I sent does not have the quote attached. I have tried resending the quote and even completely redoing the quote and resending.  There is nothing below my email for the guest to accept and finalize. Any ideas what might be going on?

Hi Tonya - I'm also in PCB!  What is the name of your company?  I'm with Premium Beach Condos

Hi, I'm Fabian and am running a few properties in Miami for other people.

Currently I am listed on Airbnb only but it seems like travel is declining and they haven't been able to provide me with the occupancy that I have experienced in the past, so I am now joining VRBO too.

The problem I'm having is that Airbnb collects and remits all taxes, being the Merchant of Record, whereas VRBO so far is telling me to process my own payments. Honestly, I don't like having my time spent filing even more tax returns and would rather VRBO be my Merchant of Record too.

Has anyone done this? Thank you.

Hi there Roman,

It's interesting to know about how you are working with OR.  How are you finding the platform? 

As I thought, Booking.com opens the European gateway ... which is what I want to do.  But the payment situation combined with no shows and cancellations sounds problematic.   I will look into that with Booking.com to see what the options may be.   

With Airbnb, I just changed the rates to reflect the 16% host fees. It's the only way I can do it so I don't lose money.  But its complicated with different rates in the system. 

Yes, the website I built myself as I did not like the templates that OR provide. 

Bye for now

Suzy

Hello Suzi,

I was exclusive to Airbnb for close to 4 years. After some contentious unfavorable guest experiences and Airbnb not being fair to hosts i decided to diversify. I did an experiment about 2 years ago with a channel manager. but Airbnb was really fulfilling all my booking needs at that time. I have an apartment and a small tiny house. located around my pool not far from the beach. so I discontinued exclusive Airbnb about 1 months ago. 

As for business on Airbnb, it has fallen off a cliff. I am glad i made the move to OR. i am on bookings now API. but i maintained just an iCal connection with Airbnb. I am very familiar with the UI of Airbnb and all the discounting systems and did not want to have to interact only threw OR. or start paying the 15% that Airbnb charges for their API, Channel manager connectivity.  it seems to be working out well.

VRBO in this market is pretty much exclusively high-end Villas. I would like to get on the Expedia network but i don't think VRBO is the way to go for me.. i may try to connect the iCal with the Expedia group and just manage the rates and discounts by hand. it seems that OR is unmotivated to add any API to Expedia partners at this time.

my typical Airbnb demographic is /was 60/40 60% north Americans and 40% euro.

my very limited data for bookings is the opposite 40/60  40% North American 60% euro. so it looks like i am going to be more rounded.

on the bookings billing part. my friend makes all his guests pre-pay/deposit threw his pay pal merchant account. otherwise, he cancels their booking. it works for him. I have heard from a lot of other villa owners that bookings have a lot of cancelations and no-shows. that is why you need to get the deposits. paying on arrival does not work with bookings.com. especially being small.. no shows have a huge impact on the bottom line. 

I like how your website is set up. did you do this yourself or did you have someone do it?

Hello there Roman,

At this moment, I am using Airbnb & VRBO, with most of the bookings coming from Airbnb as that is what everyone in Panama is more familiar with.  It seems that the bookings have dropped off and September is very quiet for us, most likely due to the economic climate. What is your experience? 

You can certainly be on on VRBO!  Sure, you have a different target market to us but you never know where you are going to pick up business.  Lots of Americans love to go to Costa Rica and are looking for everything from small, keenly priced places to stay to large and expensive accommodation.  Just be aware that VRBO have a higher host fee (8%).  You can also connect VRBO with ical, but I use the API to connect Airbnb with OR.  It works well. 

And how about Booking.com? What is your experience with that platform and where are your customers coming from?

I was considering putting our property on there, but the fees are very high and I have seen so many negative comments about guests cancelling, as they do for hotels, that I am wondering if it is worth the effort and aggravation.

 

Let me know, Roman, please.

 

Thanks

Suzy, Villa Ibis, Buenaventura, Panama

 

Suzy

 

thank you for the information. I will look these companies up. 

 

What other OTA are you using? I am currently only using Bookings.com and Airbnb. with Airbnb only connected via iCal. I see you are using VRBO as well. I have not connected my properties yet to this OTA. My price points do not seem to fit. Do you think it's worth the effort for an 80USD per night tiny house?

Suzy,

thank you for the information. I will look these companies up. 

What other OTA are you using? I am currently only using Bookings.com and Airbnb. with Airbnb only connected via iCal. I see you are using VRBO as well. I have not connected my properties yet to this OTA. My price points do not seem to fit. Do you think it's worth the effort for an 80USD per night tiny house?

Hi there Roman,

I'm Suzy next door to you in Panama. Nice to meet you and good luck with your direct business. If it's of interest, here is my vacation rental.  https://www.villaibisbuenaventura.com/

The option I'm using right now for direct booking payments is Paguelofacil (not sure if that is just Panama or Costa Rica as well) but there is also Cuanto https://web.cuanto.app/en. (also not sure if it's just Panama).  These are not payment gateways as such and there is no direct integration into Owner Rez meaning it's kind of long winded as it's not automated, but right now, seems to be the only option other than a Paypal merchant account (expensive).

Best wishes,

Suzy 

I have a guest who booked on Airbnb, and I offered her an extra night half off, to fill in the night. She accepted. I sent her a booking request from OR as I didn't know how to extend her night on Airbnb. It looks like since she accepted, it's kicked her off of Airbnb and says she booked from my website.  My issue now, is I'm afraid the system is going to shut off her door code at 11a tomorrow as that was when her 1st booking was supposed to end. I've tried changing the booking to extend, but the system keeps telling me there is a conflict with another booking.. Which is her booking for the extra night. Is there a work around this, to override the system?  She's also getting all the trigger emails since the system is seeing her as a new booking. 

Felicia 

Hi all,

New to OwnerRez but not new to Property Management.  Came from Lodgable channel manager and must say I'm so impressed by the documentation and support I've seen at OwnerRez.  I spent the whole trial setting up the system and have pretty much everything buttoned up now.  We have 2 of our own properties and are interested in branching out to manager other properties as well. 

I come from an IT background and do PHP development so I've been digging into the API quite a bit.  Looking forward to contributing to the developer community here!

Actually, i think the best bet is BAC 

https://www2.baccredomatic.com/es-cr/comercios-afiliados/herramientas-aceptar-pagos/e-commerce

the big issue is they charge 100USD per month for their eCommerce integration. The good news is that they cover a lot of different countries in Central America.. so figure out how to integrate one country it may be just a copy and past after that.

This is actually an ongoing issue that comes up from time to time - at present, we aren't aware of any of our banking partners that operate in Costa Rica.

Due to the number of Costa Rican clients we have, though, we'd be interested in talking with a suitable bank that operates there, to see if we can integrate with them as we do with many others.  Naturally, a larger bank would be preferable, particularly if it covers multiple countries in the region.

Any suggestions or contacts we should reach out to?

New to the Channel manger,

Does anybody here has properties in Costa Rica.. i been booking exclusively on Airbnb. and have decided to make the change to multiple OTAs.. not 100% set up.. but was wondering what other Costa Rican clients use for payment gateways. 

www.bambooriver.house

any help or advice would be great. 

Regards,

RJ

I have sync'd the calendar, and I am working to make sure all the I's are dotted and T's are cross before I complete the API. Any recommendations on OTC drugs to get the nerve just to do it? ha ha

Hi Debbie–your place looks like a lot of fun. Best of luck, Susan

Hello Y'all!  My husband and I do things a little different than the rest.  He builds treehouses, hobbit houses, tiny houses and A Frames.  We rent UTVs to explore the 40 acres of forest where we created scavenger hunts hidden for the explorer to enjoy!  Adventurecreekranch.com is where it happens! 

Thanks for explaining the use case.  I understand the problem now.  We debated this internally a bit, and unfortunately we don't see any way that you can charge a top-up (or prepaid) card for an additional amount beyond what you initially charged.  Really, it would depend on the limits of the card itself - how much was on it, does it allow multiple transactions, and so on.  They very greatly based on who issues them and whether they have fin-tech coding as part of them.

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your reply!

In our case (I think it'll be unusual for many here), we mainly rely on 20% deposit payment and we don't collect the 80% until the guest arrives. Cancellation fees are higher than the 20% deposit.

I know this process will sound strange but we'd like to keep this. Therefore my question about not allowing toğ-up credit cards is still valid. Is there any way of doing it?

Hi Tarki, can you refund a smaller amount instead of trying to collect a new payment?  Perhaps that's what you already tried, but typically when there's a cancellation penalty, it's collected by simply refunding a smaller amount from what the guest originally paid.

Hello there,

We sometimes can not collect the cancellation penalty due to top-up credit cards being used for bookings. Is there any possibility to stop these type of cards being accepted? or maybe making it optional (to accept or not) on the account, so the account owner decides what to do?

Hi, glad to have you here! You may find this general setup checklist helpful:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/setup-checklist

Hello everyone,

I have never used a PMS or channel manager before or even a credit card processor
My properties are mostly in Sao Paulo - Brazil
I am on the free trial version still but I liked what I found so far
Main reason for me to look into OR was the fact that I could possible streamline the operations btw the OTAs, having my own booking page and see all of that on QuickBooks.
I also like the idea to send a rental agreement to the guests

I in the process of pocking around and figure it out how to properly add my property and sync calendars and information

Thanks

Great to have you here! I'm sure you'll find many useful resources in this Forum and other parts of the site. Best of luck to you as you move forward!

Hello all,

I'm starting my own vacation rental business down in Baja California Sur, Mexico. I'm pretty new to the rental business and decided on ownerresevations.com after much research as well as all the great reviews it has received from friends in the rental business. Excited to be here and on this learning journey.

Hello, and welcome to OwnerRez!

The tiny homes sound very interesting, that's a super cool opportunity!

I am a new user of OwnerRez and I just switched over from Lodgify and am so happy I have done so! I am a Chartered Accountant and Real Estate Investor and specialize in tiny homes and garden suites (also called ADU's or garage suites). I am excited to be adding two new tiny homes in Belize to my portfolio this month and it is so nice to have all my reviews along with all my financials in one place here on OwnerRez!